joe-posnanski Page index.xml - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights


The Art Of The Insult: How To Win A Swearing Contest With Dignity
A few years ago, Joe Posnanski—formerly a Kansas City sportswriter, and today famous as a JoePa apologist—interviewed me about one of my books and posted my answers on his blog. He asked me whether, if I'd become a major league pitcher, I still would have become a writer. I emailed, "No. I would hav...

The Tony Pena Story
Here's Joe Posnanski's Tony Pena story. It originally ran in the Kansas City Star back in 2003. Joe reprinted it on his blog in 2010:...

Liveblogging That Joe Posnanski Column About Hockey
5:50.27 p.m.: "HOCKEY: A WRINGER OF EMOTIONS LIKE NO OTHER"...

Brian De Palma Will Direct That Forthcoming Joe Paterno Movie Starring Al Pacino
We learned back in September that Joe Posnanski's book Paterno would be hitting the big screen, and that Al Pacino had been lined up to play the late Penn State coach. We hadn't heard anything since then, so we hadn't thought anything of it, at least not until we saw this Deadline report:...

Al Pacino Will Play Joe Paterno In A Proposed Movie Based On Joe Posnanski's Book
We could have anticipated many of the byproducts of the Penn State scandal—flawed apologies, spunky T-shirts, cardboard cutouts—but we were not expecting a movie deal with Al Pacino attached....

The Six Things You Should Know About Joe Posnanski's Paterno Book
Joe Posnanski has written a mostly sympathetic biography of Joe Paterno, which shouldn't be a surprise, given some of Posnanski's previous statements. It's a book at war with itself. At its best, it's a clear-eyed biography of a guy who became a cautionary tale about the dangers of mythmaking; at it...

Joe Posnanski Says He Told Joe Paterno He Should Have Done More To Stop Jerry Sandusky
We've obtained a copy of Joe Posnanski's book, Paterno, which is scheduled for release Tuesday. We've already shared some reactions from others who have had a chance to read an advance copy. And while we're still parsing through the book, we're passing along certain details as we come across them....

Take A Minute To Check Out Sports On Earth
Do you like reading about sports on the internet? Of course you do. So go visit Sports On Earth, that mysterious USA Today/MLB Advanced Media venture we mentioned a few months back. They have a preview just in time for the Olympics, and you can read Joe Posnanski, emeritus Will Leitch, and other gre...

Joe Posnanski Won't Be Doing Very Many Interviews Or Readings For <em>Paterno</em>
Joe Posnanski is having a hard time coming by any good news these days. The latest? The book tour and media interviews for his woefully timed biography, Paterno, due out Aug. 21, will now be severely cut back....

Even <em>Sports Illustrated</em> Doesn't Want Anything To Do With Joe Posnanski's Paterno Biography
The first review of Joe Posnanksi's Joe Paterno biography is in and it isn't good: Offered first serial rights to a book written by a former Sports Illustrated senior writer, the magazine said no. Assistant managing editor Chris Hunt confirmed to Deadspin that SI passed on running an excerpt. Posnan...

Joe Posnanski's Book On Joe Paterno Will Be Finished Before The Sandusky Trial
Joe Posnanski didn't go to Happy Valley to write about the unhappy end of Joe Pateno's life and career. He intended it as an eternal Father's Day gift, a sappy and sentimental picture of the aging lion in repose. It was originally scheduled to be released in time for Father's Day, and Posnanski said...

Joe Posnanski Is Leaving <em>Sports Illustrated</em> For Some Sort Of New <em>USA Today</em> Venture
Posnanski confirmed his departure after approximately three years at SI in a phone conversation with The Big Lead. He's joining some sort of joint venture between USA Today and MLB Advanced Media, which became a thing just last month....

A Plea To Joe Posnanski: Stop Writing Mealy-Mouthed Nonsense About Joe Paterno
Sports Illustrated's Joe Posnanski is in a tough spot. He's a gifted writer and by all appearances a decent guy. His decency is his defining characteristic; he grew up rooting for doomed Cleveland teams and covered the worthless Kansas City Royals, but he never gave in to the urge to be a hatchet ma...

Journalists Address PSU's JoePa Class This Morning, Say He's a Scapegoat
There is no more telling fact than PSU having a regular class about Joe Paterno. Comm 497G: Joe Paterno, Communications & the Media, better known as "JoePa Class," studies the media through the lens of the longtime football coach. Today was obviously not a normal day. Instead, Joe Posnanski and Pat...

Dear Joe Posnanski: Baseball Is Not Like Life
In our weekly excerpt from Slate's Hang Up and Listen podcast, noted author and occasional NFL roundtabler Stefan Fatsis wants to quibble with those writers who took last week's two-hour-long orgasm that ended the baseball regular season, and turned it into some kind of metaphor for life. In particu...

Joe Posnanski's Profile Of Bill James Will Get You Pumped For <em>Moneyball</em>
It's like Sabermetric Christmas: "Yes, he was driven nuts early and often, and he raged back with a sort of funny, blunt and often searing writing that appealed to an audience nobody had realized existed. Bill James was not the first person to search for knowledge in baseball, not even close, but un...

Steve Carlton Really Was A One-Man Team In 1972
Joe Posnanski presents a backhanded defense of the old-fashioned statistic of baseball pitchers' wins today. True, the "winning pitcher" depends on his teammates playing defense and scoring runs for him; yes, great pitchers in bad circumstances can produce feeble win totals, and bad pitchers for gre...

Joe Posnanski Is The Salt Of The Earth, Peter King Is A Leech
Last Wednesday, a storm hit the Northeast. Two esteemed sports writers were stranded in different cities, but absolutely had to get to their destinations. These are their stories....

Joe Posnanski Brings Himself To Say A Few Nice Things About Mitch Albom
Of a guy he doesn't much like, Posnanski writes: "Mitch Albom inspired me to become a sportswriter. Mitch Albom inspired many of my friends to become sportswriters....[H]e is one of the most influential sportswriters in the history of American newspapers."...